We are in Great Debates, here, not Cafe Society. Please point out where I made any such claim, or stop trying to argue by logical fallacy.
The two movies that immediately comes to mind when I think of WW-II is the German Das Boot and Enemy at The Gates (taking place in Stalingrad). The novels I remember is a series by the Danish author Sven Hassel, which I read as a kid (about German soldiers, mostly on the East-front). The non—fiction book which comes to mind is Stalingrad by Antony Beevor. And the song I think of when thinking WW-II is Lili Marleen and perhaps Vera Lynn.
When I think of WW-II I think mostly of Germany, Russia and England. I can picture Hitler, Churchill and Stalin in my mind. The US president, not so much.
Huh? Whatever, just forget I said anything.
Well, I reckon that if plenty of people go watch “Valkyrie”, American studios may have more interest in making WWII films that aren’t just about the US.
Horrible…and yet Farcry 2 let’s you do so much with it. But then no one ever cares about Africa, do they?
I’m 36 and we used to play “Army” as a kid with surplus camo, plastic Tommyguns, toy Enfield rifles or even sticks if we ran out of guns.
I’ve been playing paintball off and on since junior high.
I would bet you that Roman kids used to play “legionare” with sticks and pieces of wood as shields.
There has always been an attraction to the mythology and spectacle of war, probably ever since there has been war.
History renders all wars as “fairy tales” so I’m not sure what the OP’s point is:
-The American Revolution consisted of Minutemen harassing Redcoats at Lexington and Concord, camping at Valley Forge with the French, Washington crossing the Delaware and finally Corwallis’s surrender at Yorktown.
-The Civil War was basically a lot of generic Blue vs Grey battles to free the salves, Gettysburg, Lee surrenders and Lincoln gets shot.
-WWI was basically trenches and the Red Baron.
-WWII has always been basically a compilation of every WWII movie you have ever seen. Wisecracking GIs shipped overseas killing Krauts and Japs. And thanks to Saving Private Ryan, it will always be remembered in that gritty “stutter” effect.
-No one knows anything about the Korean War they didn’t see in M.A.S.H.
-'Nam was basically a bunch of hard core ragged John Rambo and Chuck Norris clones enduring punji sticks, their best buddy getting killed, danger close airstrikes, idiot officers and all manner of jungle horror while they ride into battle on a beat-up Huey to kill Gooks wholesale so they can get spit on back home for their troubles by a bunch of dirty hippies.
Paring down equally is one thing but when you exalt smaller things from your own side and pare down huge things from the other sides then it is distortion and not good. When Americans believe they singlehandedly won WWII and the rest of the allies were anecdotal then you are creating a problem which leads to, for example, not understanding why the Russians have a certain paranoia about their security. When you know the price they paid then you begin to understand their position.
Like U-571? 
Don’t forget taxicabs!
I don’t think that a concern over fostering an erroneous view of history means that every story based on a historical event has to show every side of that event in an accurate way.
Also, on the specific objection you raised, see Enemy at the Gates.
I’d be happy if most people knew this much. I can assure you that this is far beyond what my sister, for instance (23 years old, honor roll every semester in high school and graduated early, some college) knows about WWII, and she is smarter than most people I know. Ditto my sister in law, my 3 best friends from high school, and possibly even my mom. A lot of people just could not possibly care less about history.
Well, the thing is, you are looking at this from purely an American perspective I think. I’ve been to Europe and they have a completely different take on things (as do the Chinese and Japanese, Australians and Canadians and everyone else who participated). There are people in Europe who are, for instance, convinced that the US did little or nothing during the war and that it was the Soviets (single handedly or perhaps with a bit of help from the Brits) to defeat the Nazi’s and the US was just along for the ride and to scoop up the scraps after all the fighting was done. Also that the Japanese theater was just a side show and really was meaningless…and not a lot happened there, etc etc.
Everyone is going to have a different perspective on what ‘really’ happened during WWII, and their persception of reality is going to be skewed by their own experiences filtered through the folks who actually participated and then simmered in down by time. You are seeing games and movies from a purely US perspective (which tend to idealize things and water them down anyway) because a lot of gaming and movie producers are US companies…so you are going to get a more US-centric perspective.
But you know, this is always the case with history. The winners write the history, and the dominant players put their own spin on things…and that spin is what enters the collective consiousness of folks. So in that sense, the answer is yes…WWII is going to turn into a Fairy Tale or an idealized version of the truth and probably from a US perspective…at least in the US and in those countries who use US software and watch US movies.
C’est la vie. Appologies for all the typos above…doing this from my phone in the air port. Hopefully I made some point and it wasn’t all a big ramble…
-XT
None of this is new. It isn’t a result of the mass media or of modern people dumbing down their history. It has always happened and will always happen. Only the stage dressing is new.
Look at the War of 1812. Americans think it was their first great hurrah on the world stage, when it would best be described, objectively, as a brief and modestly distracting sideshow in a longer, wider conflict. Most Americans have no idea what happened in the 20-odd years before 1812, or the context in which our piddling little spat should be understood. The most people know about it is a Johnny Horton song, for crying out loud, which builds on 150 years of mythmaking and ahistorical simplification.
Go back further, and look at Shakespeare’s history plays. Even the ones about comparatively recent events indulge in conflation and generalization. Our basic understanding of events is build around the biases of storytelling; over time, our histories, left to themselves, will drift to the gravitational center of narrative appeal.
Wait long enough, and everything becomes a fairy tale. The only reason you’re noticing it with respect to WWII is because of the mounds of documentary evidence that give the lie to the oversimplified myth.
If you’re drawing these conclusions from one video game and assuming they’ll affect entire generations…
… well, your conclusions are absurd.
No, not just one computer game. I just like to begin my OPs with a brief outline of where the topic for discussion has come from, and in this case it was a discussion elsewhere on the boards about a new computer game, which bills itself as being “World At War” yet has the same players (excuse the pun) as every other WWII game out there, near enough.
The new COD game prominently features the Eastern front. Half of the game is played as a Red Army soldier, from Stalingrad to Berlin.
Historical analysis of past events today runs the gamut from factual to fantastical. There’s interest in both types of interpretations. If you want to examine computer games, look at games like The Operational Art of War. You’ll find plenty of accurate historical simulation in those games.
Americans understand the fears of the Russian people and government, perhaps better than anyone. All the supposed hand-wringing on the part of the U.S. when Russia invaded Georgia was simply a political position taken by the government. I don’t get the sense that the average American citizen was calling for a strong American response to the invasion. I, for one, understood Russia’s position.
Dude, most of us have no idea what happened between 1776 and 1861.
If you’re going to bemoan a lack of education you should at least try to get the names of the countries involved in WWII right.
It was the Soviet Union, not Russia.
It was Britain, not England.
In Soviet Russia, education bemoans you!
If you are going to bemoan the lack of geographic knowledge, you at least should try to read the post first, as I in fact didn’t “bemoan” anything, but was merely pointing out that in Europe, the USA perhaps doesn’t fill so much in people’s consciousness as it does in the USA. And when I think of WW-II it is England and Russia that comes to mind first rather than Britain and the Soviet Union, although I know those are the correct nations involved. So shoot me.